Seattle Seahawks 20 - Atlanta Falcons 36
In the playoffs, when the best teams meet, games are often decided by a mistake here or there, or a penalty called or not called. Under coach Pete Carroll, the Seattle Seahawks have built a reputation of minimising those mistakes and forcing their opponents to make them instead.
But on Saturday, it was the Seahawks who came up short in a divisional-round playoff game against the Atlanta Falcons and their potent offense. The Falcons advanced to the NFC championship game next Sunday, when they will face the winner of this Sunday's game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers.
The Seahawks were leading, 10-7, when they forced the Falcons to punt early in the second quarter. Seattle's Devin Hester, who has returned 19 kickoffs and punts for touchdowns during his career, caught the kick, spun away from a defender, then sprinted down the sideline before being knocked out of bounds deep in Falcons territory. The Seahawks appeared poised to build a double-digit lead.
But a holding call on Seattle linebacker Kevin Pierre-Louis negated the runback and reversed Seattle's field position -Â from the Atlanta 7-yard line to its own 7-yard line - and, two plays later, quarterback Russell Wilson fell backward into the end zone for a safety.
After the ensuing kickoff, Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan quickly hit receiver Taylor Gabriel for 37 yards. Four plays later, the Falcons kicked a 35-yard field goal to go ahead, 12-10.
The quick turnaround unhinged the Seahawks while the Falcons sprinted ahead and captured their first playoff victory in four years, 36-20.
After taking the lead in the second quarter, Atlanta's potent offense had its way with Seattle's defense - one of the stingiest in the NFL despite missing the star free safety Earl Thomas, who broke his leg in Week 13. Just before halftime, Ryan led a 99-yard march that ended with a 14-yard touchdown pass to Tevin Coleman to put the Falcons up, 19-10.
"You knew it was going to be a fight in terms of their defense against our offense," Falcons coach Dan Quinn said. "We certainly have the respect of the style they play."
Ryan may not be flashy, but he showed why he is considered a leading candidate to win the NFL's Most Valuable Player Award. He does not scramble like Wilson or throw fastballs into tight coverage like Green Bay's Aaron Rodgers. But at 6 feet 5 inches tall, he has a wide view of the field to go with an accurate arm.
This regular season, his ninth in Atlanta, Ryan passed for 38 touchdowns and nearly 5,000 yards. He had a 69.9 percent pass completion rate and the league's top passer rating, accomplishments that have often gone unnoticed, perhaps because the Falcons rarely play in prime time.
Ryan's numbers - 26 completions on 37 passes for 338 yards and three touchdowns with zero interceptions - were enough to prompt the Falcons fans to chant "MVP, MVP" in the fourth quarter.
"It was pretty cool, considering the circumstances," Ryan said of the cheers.
Ryan made few mistakes while Wilson threw two interceptions. Quinn noted that when the Falcons lost to the Seahawks in the regular season, his team had two more turnovers than Seattle. On Saturday, the reverse was true.
The Falcons' defense, one of the most porous in the league during the regular season, overwhelmed Seattle's offensive line and harassed Wilson, frequently forcing him to scramble. It also bottled up running back Thomas Rawls, who ran effectively early in the game but ended with just 34 yards, 15 fewer than Wilson.
After nearly being burned by Hester in the second quarter, the Falcons did a good job of keeping the ball away from him - until he returned a fourth-quarter kickoff all the way to the Atlanta 31-yard line, setting up Seattle's final touchdown.
"A number of us and especially everyone in this room has seen that movie before," Quinn said of Hester, who played in Atlanta for two years, and his penchant for big plays.
In his five years in the league, Wilson has built a reputation for late comebacks. In 2012, his rookie season, Wilson led the Seahawks back from a 20-point deficit in a playoff game, also in Atlanta, only to lose on a late field goal.
That magic was not evident Saturday in front of a raucous crowd at the Georgia Dome.
With his team trailing by 29-13, Wilson scrambled free while seeking a receiver. Unable to find one, he decided to do with his feet what he could not with his arm. He raced for the first-down marker only to be hit hard by Atlanta cornerback Brian Poole, who drove his shoulder into Wilson and threw him to the ground.
And it was the Falcons' defense that ultimately provided the capstone.
Midway through the fourth quarter, Wilson was again forced to run out of the pocket. In desperation, he lofted a pass downfield that Falcons safety Ricardo Allen plucked out of the air and returned 45 yards. Ryan's third touchdown pass, a 3-yard toss to Mohamed Sanu, soon put the Falcons up by 36-13 and the game out of reach.
The victory may have given Falcons fans one last chance to visit the Georgia Dome, the team's home since 1992.
Next season, the team will move into Mercedes-Benz Stadium, a $1.5 billion palace 90 feet to the south. The Falcons are 4-2 in playoff games in the Georgia Dome. If the Packers beat the Cowboys in Texas on Sunday, the Falcons will host the NFC championship game here.
"For the fans, the ability to come back here one more time, I think that would be something we would all look forward to," Quinn said.
Houston Texans 16 - New England Patriots 34
​The New England Patriots have accomplished so much under coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady, but they found something new to achieve Saturday night at Gillette Stadium. In outlasting the Houston Texans, 34-16, the Patriots set an NFL record for conference dominance and used a rare performance by a running back to get it.
The Patriots became the first team in the Super Bowl era to reach the conference championship game six years in a row. And running back Dion Lewis became the first player to score touchdowns on a run, a reception and a kickoff return in a postseason game.
It was enough to turn a tight game into another January rout, as the Patriots have done for years in the divisional round. In the previous five seasons, New England won each of its games at this stage in the postseason, all at home, by an average of 16 points. Accordingly, they were 16-point favorites to win on Saturday, the largest spread for any playoff game since 1998.
The Texans, meanwhile, had never survived this round and had gotten here by beating an Oakland Raiders team that was forced to start its third-string quarterback. The last time Houston played in New England, the Patriots shut them out behind quarterback Jacoby Brissett. He was inactive Saturday.
The starter this time, of course, was Brady, who missed the first game with the Texans while serving a suspension related to the deflation of footballs here during the 2015 AFC championship game.
Brady was coming off a remarkable regular season, averaging nearly 300 passing yards per game, with 28 touchdowns and two interceptions. He matched that interception total Saturday, but in the end it did not matter much.
Brady threw his first touchdown pass with 9 minutes, 27 seconds left in the first quarter, finding Lewis for 13 yards. The Texans then turned an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Eric Rowe into a sustained drive, collecting four first downs but settling for a Nick Novak field goal to make it 7-3.
Novak's ensuing kickoff fell to Lewis at the 2-yard line, but Lewis tore through the Texans, eluding a diving Robert Nelson and dashing untouched into the end zone. It was the first postseason kickoff return for a touchdown in Patriots history and the second score of the quarter for Lewis, who had no touchdowns in the regular season.
At that point, the Texans probably needed something strange to happen, and the Patriots provided it. Brady's first pass of the second quarter bounced off the fingers of wide receiver Michael Floyd and into the arms of cornerback A.J. Bouye. Again, the Texans could manage just a field goal, to make it 14-6.
And again, the Patriots would help them out.
This time, Lewis' kickoff return went as poorly as possible. Akeem Dent forced a fumble, and the Texans recovered at the New England 12-yard line. Two plays later, Houston quarterback Brock Osweiler found tight end C.J. Fiedorowicz for a 10-yard touchdown strike.
The fans had reason to expect a blowout, but with the Patriots' lead cut to 14-13, they went quiet. The next two drives brought more cause for concern: Both ended with a sack and a punt. Even the Patriots' last drive of the half was unfulfilling, ending with a field goal after three plays from inside the 5-yard line.
On the Patriots' second drive of the third quarter, though, Brady connected four times with Julian Edelman, who finished with 137 yards and moved into eighth on the list for postseason receptions in a career. The drive ended with a 19-yard touchdown pass to James White, and New England carried the 24-13 advantage into the fourth quarter.
Yet, after five seconds, Novak knocked through a 46-yard field goal, capitalising on Andre Hal's interception of Brady late in the third quarter. Novak's kick made it a one-score game, at 24-16, but the Patriots' defense soon soothed any anxiety the crowd might have felt.
With 13 minutes left in the fourth quarter, Osweiler fired to DeAndre Hopkins, who tipped the ball to Logan Ryan for an interception. Ryan returned it 23 yards to the Texans' 6-yard line, a devastating blow for Houston. Two plays later, Lewis rumbled into the end zone from one yard out.
According to ESPN, just two other players in NFL history have had rushing, receiving and kick-return touchdowns in the same game: Kansas City's Tyreek Hill this season, and Chicago's Gale Sayers in 1965.
The New York Times
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